


The Sound of Science

by frubeto



Series: challenges [1]
Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Gen, Missing Scene, Slice of Life
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-01
Updated: 2019-04-01
Packaged: 2019-12-30 14:20:30
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18316994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/frubeto/pseuds/frubeto
Summary: Discovery is a science vessel, after all.Kinda missing scenes from 2x01 through 2x06.





	The Sound of Science

 

 

Paul sighed as he sat down in the dirt. Getting through the day had been harder these past weeks, now that the storm of the war had settled and realization of what they had lost slowly crept into the collective mind. There had been lots of deaths, of course, but those from their ship were more prominent, affecting everyday life, leaving tangible gaps all around. 

 

Hugh had been known by everyone. Many had been his patients. Most had been treated by him at one point or another. Which was why Paul found himself in the cultivation bay more often these days, when he had reports to prepare, or communications to the Vulcan Science Academy to write. Here at least, everything was as it had been. The plants were recovering beautifully, and no one had any business being in here but him. No one was here to look at him with pity. No one would speak to him in that careful voice that drove him up the wall and made him feel like an unstable isotope at the same time. No one would tiptoe around him, averting their eyes or slowing their movements as if he were a canister of warp plasma, labeled EXTREME CAUTION. No one would ask if he was _okay,_ if he  _needed anything,_ if there was  _anything they could do._

 

No one but Tilly.

She did have duties inside the bay, and she had also been very creative in inventing new ones to keep up her unsubtle schedule of checking in on him. After she had once found him quietly sobbing a few hours into their shift, she probably hadn’t been keen on repeating the experience.

He let her.

She disturbed the silence in carefully calculated intervals, and it was good to be roused from his thoughts every now and again, even if only for timekeeping.

 

So he turned on his PADD and, with nothing surrounding him but his mushrooms and the gentle breeze of environment control correcting the air quality, he got to work.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

The day had been, to say the least,  _eventful._

They had almost been destroyed by an ancient, dying sphere, and instead gained an invaluable amount of information, including Spock’s trail. They had almost lost Saru, and instead found new insight into his species, and their relationship. They had almost lost Tilly, and got her free from the sentient fungus unharmed. There had been waves of relief and euphoria. 

Until the second call came. It had been Reno, informing them that Tilly had been taken again, and that she was nowhere to be found. Michael didn’t bother asking for permission to go to engineering this time. She ran.

 

But there had been nothing to be done, so now she sat in their shared quarters, staring at Tilly’s deserted bed and dealing with all those emotion the only way she knew how. Meditating. She had arranged everything, even the incense she didn’t usually have time for, and it was perfectly quiet, nobody should need to disturb her – the best conditions for a productive session. Yet she couldn’t concentrate. Which was illogical. She had been able to meditate before under any circumstances. With Tilly out to give her some peace. Or with Tilly walking in on her and wildly apologizing. With Tilly rummaging through the room and straight up staring at her. Or with Tilly simply snoring on her bed. So why couldn’t she now?

 

It took another twenty unsuccessful minutes before she accepted that the possibility of a  _‘without Tilly’_ was making the emptiness of the room unbearable, and she got up and left.

 

She wasn’t surprised to find herself in engineering again. Stamets was still there, scurrying around with a few more scientists than the last time she had seen him, and gave her an odd look when she approached, but informed her that while there were no news, they were doing everything possible to see if and how they could still save her. She nodded her thanks and let him get back to work, simply staring at the thing in the middle of the engineering floor. When he passed her again, she stopped him.

 

“Would you mind if I stayed here for a while?”

 

He shrugged.

 

“Suit yourself.”

 

And so she sat down on the floor somewhere she would not be in the way, crossed her legs, and closed her eyes. But if there was one word not generally associated with engineering, it was silence. Especially today. Just after she had gotten comfortable, someone arrived from behind her, slowed down as they passed, probably to regard her with confusion, but continued on towards the main floor.

 

“Stamets!”

 

It was Reno. There was no response, but Michael assumed he had given her his usual  _‘what do you want’_ face.

 

“You asked for this?”

 

A soft thanks, the sound of something changing hands, and then Reno’s typical sarcasm was back.

 

“Do you really think you can get her back with math, prayers, and mushrooms?”

 

“Maybe a bit of duct tape,” Stamets deadpanned, and she huffed.

 

“I like your way of thinking.”

 

He must have been going again, because she called him back with a “Hey” and continued more quietly,

 

“If there’s any way I can help, let me know.”

 

Before her footsteps receded towards another exit. Michael followed them mentally, Starfleet issue boots echoing on metal floor, getting lost in all the other movement, people hurrying from one place to another, pneumatic doors opening and closing, the occasional whirring of tools, fingertips on touchscreens and the acknowledging tones of the computer, insistent chatter mixing with the hum of the nearby warpcore into a familiar white noise she could tune out better than any silence.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

All eyes were on Commander Burnham as she entered the bioscience lab. 

She was far from a regular guest. Linus himself wasn’t in here often, only occasionally borrowing one of their stations for their efficiency, so the second intruder in a day was probably cause for concern among the scientists. But Burnham quickly found who she was looking for, a young Ensign working a few rows behind him whose name he didn’t remember, and everyone went on with their business. The scratching and clinking of glass on glass picked up again, and Linus turned back to his analysis with a sigh. The computer could basically do it on it’s own, but every once in a while the algorithm would reach a point where it couldn’t make sense of something and needed input from a non-artificial intelligence. So most of his time was spent waiting, and hoping something more interesting would come up.

 

But it didn’t. The Ensign led Burnham to another station to show her something presumably relevant to whatever she was here for, Ograiki returned with a cart full of equipment, too light for the antigrav but heavy enough apparently to warrant the headache-inducing metal atrocity, and K’ar next to him kept trying to convince him their sample looked like the andorian chancellor. 

 

“Computer, analyze the surface of the sample and compare the results to the image of the current head of the andorian government.”

 

Another voice in the choir of commands for analysis, a composition also featuring the computer’s responses, forcefields being activated and deactivated to move things, and the deep rhythmic rumbling of machinery.

 

Actually, Linus was about to wonder whether the sounds coming from behind him were supposed to remind him of a dying animal, when the computer answered that for him.

 

“ _Warning: Unstable s-”_

 

The rest was drowned out by someone yelling “Get down!” in a voice loud enough that it was safe to assume they meant everyone. 

 

Linus barely had time to crouch down next to his station before the shockwave hit.

 

He only dared to move again once the following silence had been replaced by ringing, though whether it was from alarms blaring or an after effect, he couldn’t tell. The air had filled with a light dust that stung his eyes as he stood, disoriented, hearts beating, until his ears picked up something from his left and he realized that whatever was in the air, it probably wasn’t breathable for other species.

 

“K’ar?” he called when he couldn’t see them, and started in their vague direction. There was some coughing and wheezing in response, and eventually Linus found them, leaning against the far wall.

 

“I’m fine,” they croaked, and then tried to address the computer, but were held up by another fit.

 

Right, there had to be some kind of protocol for this kind of situation. Starfleet always planned for everything. But he couldn’t for the life of him remember the proper name. Well, shit. While he was still thinking, though, Ograiki finished the command, luckily up as well, and the air slowly began to clear. Nonetheless he grabbed K’ar and led them to the exit to be safe, and saw her do the same with Commander Burnham.

 

It was when they passed his station on the way out that he briefly noticed the analysis had come to a halt again, and he shook his head. There was a human saying that was appropriate here, he was sure.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

Tilly had been alone in the lab except for Linus, who had asked to use one of their stations after a mishap in the bio lab, so she noticed immedia tely when the computer alerted her that one of the spore drive’s circuits was defective. She didn’t want to bother Stamets, and so grabbed her PADD to check on it herself before going home.

 

Once she had reached the right corridor, she could venture a good guess at the cause of the error. A Jefferies tube was open, and next to it a toolbox, placed upon a uniform. She took a closer look. Bronze. Four stripes. Three pips on the badge.

 

“Commander Reno?”

 

“Hiya, kid.”

 

It was unmistakably her, the response muted by the metal between them but not failing to convey that air of bored authority that still made her hands shake sometimes.

 

“What are you doing?”

 

“There was a plasma leak. I’m trying to fix it. I might have also caused it. It’s a long story.”

 

“Well, it seems to have taken us down with it.”

 

“...terribly sorry,” Reno drawled, but while the sarcasm was in place, it sounded strained.

 

“Are you okay?”

 

Tilly didn’t know what she was expecting – probably a witty dismissal – but what followed was a long pause and some shifting betrayed by several dull thuds. And really, that should have clued her in, but it took a nonchalant “I’ve had worse.” which she knew by now to be tough-girl speak for  _‘it’s really kinda bad’_ for her to crouch down and look up into the tube.

 

“Holy f-… _phase converter!”_

 

The safety doors had closed, and through them, she could see Reno, covered in plasma burns all down her left side.

 

“You mean you caused the leak _while you were in there?!”_

 

Reno sighed.

 

“Yeah.” She tapped something with the tool she was holding. “That coil gave out, disrupted the EM field and it melted right through.”

 

Trust Reno to sti ll be down-to-earth in a situation like this. Tilly would probably have freaked out by now. She could feel it creep up on her already, just standing on the outside. But then Reno turned her head up to look at her and her voice took a softer tone again.

 

“Don’t worry, emergency safeguards kicked in, all power should be cut or rerouted, I’m fine. I’m also trapped.”

 

Tilly’s definition of fine was certainly a different one, but she decided not to comment on that. She debated instead whether she should be informing sickbay, but they were useless while Reno was in there, they wouldn’t even be able to beam her out with all that interference. So Tilly quickly turned  to the other questions on her mind, like  _what were the three main rules for dealing with plasma again_ and  _where could she get a plan of the circuitry in this section_ and-

 

“Why are you in there upside down?”

 

“‘Cause I’m batman,” Reno snapped, “Can we please focus on the important part?”

 

Tilly jumped up.

 

“Yes. Of course. I-… yes.”

 

She located the nearest control panel and pulled up it’s information.

 

“I can confirm there’s no power going in right now.”

 

More frantic touches to the screen.

 

“It won’t let me open the doors, though.”

 

She threw her hands up.

 

“It’s not accepting any commands, it-it’s stuck in lockdown. It says PIHC hasn’t completed? That can’t be right.”

 

If she remembered correctly, that was the procedure that compensated for the excessive pressure caused by the plasma, and the heat, and the ionization, as well as eventual coolant leakage. It would be the only thing that had kept Reno alive, and of course also the thing that kept the doors locked so that no engineer would try to open it for repairs and get a face full of hot, ionized gas.

 

“It’s not. Something probably got lost when things went haywire in here. Can you override it?”

 

“I’m trying, but there’s no-”

 

The screen froze, causing her to tap more furiously against it.

 

“Hello-oh? Oh, come on you stupid- urgh. Don’t do this to me. It can’t be that hard to just- let me-”

 

Her head hit the wall with a frustrated sigh.

 

“I don’t think it’s going to work this way. Is there anything you can do from the inside?”

 

“No, nothing short of patching up the EPS and let you tinker with the relay to trick the system. And if that’s your plan, I’m vetoing.”

 

It took her a while to follow Reno’s thought process. Theoretically, it would work, but she deemed Reno’s judgment of what could or couldn’t be done to be already skewed towards adventurism, so if she said no, it really wasn’t possible.

 

Pulse rising, Tilly turned to walking up and down the corridor, going over everything. From her knowledge of the situation, what parts and sensors should still be working? Which ones are not to be trusted? What did she have that she could work with? And what could she accomplish with that? She was probably talking out loud, but she didn’t care, going through ideas a hundred miles an hour. This was what she was good at. She only had to find a way around-

 

“Wait.” The solution was slowly puzzling itself together in front of her. “What if we crash the system?”

 

“What?”

 

“That’s it!” It was clear now. “Crash the system! It shouldn’t take much until-”

 

“And then what? Backup systems are even less fun to deal with.”

 

“Yes,” she agreed, “but, that would give me some time while they’re booting, with no safety around the wiring, which should allow me to screw that thing open and-”

 

“Short circuit the locking mechanism and open the doors manually,” Reno finished, catching on.

 

“Yes!”

 

The excitement of possibly having a functioning plan was palpable in the air and growing with every moment that passed without Reno pointing out any fatal complications Tilly might have overlooked.

 

“… you won’t have more than a minute.”

 

“I’m fast, I can do that.”

 

She was bouncing by now. Eventually, Reno chuckled.

 

“There’s an engineer in you after all, huh?”

 

Tilly beamed, took that as the implicit permission she had been waiting for, and got to work.

 

Not long after, she was pulling Reno out of the Jefferies tube headfirst, accompanied by a series of carefully concealed groans and gasps and a suspicious crackle of hopefully only minor electrical discharges.

 

“I’m calling sickbay,” Tilly announced as she sat Reno down against the wall, but she shook her head decidedly, which would be intimidating if she hadn’t still be holding on to Tilly’s arm like a lifeline.

 

“I’ll walk. Just give me a minute.”

 

Then she let go, and Tilly stood up, regarding her and making sure it would be no more than exactly a minute. 

During their rescue there had been no one around, and it would be unusual at this time, but now there were footsteps approaching from around the corner, and they both looked up at the engineer that arrived.

 

“Hey, I heard there was a problem with the-” he broke off, probably seeing Reno. She only huffed, holding out her good hand in expectation, and Tilly complied, heaving her up.

 

“Let’s go.”

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

“… and we didn’t _know._ But it kept sending these flashes of ultraviolet light only Saru could see, right? And-”

 

Hugh looked up at him from the biobed. He wasn’t following. Hadn’t been for a while. But the glint in Paul’s eyes and the tone in his voice as he rambled on were a welcome anchor against everything else that had been constantly crashing in on him. It had simply been too much, in the beginning. It still was a strain. In the network, there had been nothing. Only the chirps and squeaks of the Jah’Sepp, himself, and whatever else he imagine there to be. And now. The sheer  _noise_ of the world. From the incessant roar of the engines to the sharp eeps of monitors, the aggressive hiss of hyposprays biting into his skin not unlike the Jah’Sepp did, the mere presence of people, and all the different vibrations of the machinery Pollard insisted he had to be scanned and prodded by. He knew all of those sounds by heart, and they should feel like home, he knew they once had, but all he heard was a cacophony of dissonant mechanical notes hitting his eardrums.

 

Paul finally leaned back, having noticed he wasn’t being listened to.

 

“Where did I lose you?” he asked playfully, smile audible, but Hugh only shook his head to say he didn’t even remember, and let his eyes close.

 

“Sorry.”

 

Paul stayed quiet for a bit, probably trying not to be offended. Then,

 

“Are you okay?”

 

It was a stupid question. And Hugh was about to reply accordingly, when Paul followed it up with a hand on his arm that he hadn’t seen coming and made him jump. At least now Paul quickly pulled it back, and Hugh was glad, even if he would have preferred not to have had to spell it out for him.

 

“I’ll get that into my head eventually.”

 

Hugh squeezed his eyes shut again and nodded. Part of him wanted to tell Paul to go, but he also didn’t want to be left alone with this. Now that Paul was keeping his mouth shut, probably positively cowering in his chair with the way he had been sitting before, unsure what to do or say, their surroundings found their way back to Hugh. And he was growing to hate them. Pollard was giving orders somewhere in the distance, where he could barely make out the words if he tried, someone seemed to be doing inventory on a new supply, a constant clattering accompanied by the antigrav powering up and down, and somewhere not so far off, Nurse Sheng was clearly giving the health-and-safety-speech to someone who had just called safety protocols a  _‘waste of time’._

 

So before Paul could make a run for it, he opened his eyes again, turned his head and put a hand out to Paul’s knee. Paul didn’t move.

 

“I’m tired,” Hugh started, and wasn’t that an understatement. He hadn’t slept since… since he was resurrected. Or even before. Things worked differently in the network.

 

“If it’s important that I understand, you’ll have to try again tomorrow.” Presuming he would feel better then.

 

“Okay,” came the small reply from the bedside.

 

“Could you-” 

 

Hugh stopped himself and sighed. This was going to sound weird. But then who cared about weird on this ship anymore. 

 

“… keep talking anyway?”

 

Paul, expectedly, gave him a look.

 

“About anything, really,” he explained. “I just want to hear your voice.”

 

“I erm...” The gears in Paul’s head were either turning vigorously or not at all, he couldn’t tell. “I could read you Tilly’s study on fungus-based filtration systems she asked me to proofread?”

 

He indicated his PADD on the table and Hugh nodded, pulled his hand back and rolled on his side to get comfortable.

 

“Alright. So it’s about how mycofiltration can be improved using properties of _stella_. She knows that, actually, because we put it to the test in a kind of red alert situation, but that doesn’t look too good on paper. I’ll have to tell you about that sometime.”

 

He cleared his throat.

 

“ _Laboratory experiments showed that under the aforementioned conditions, Prototaxites stellaviatori can –_ there’s a comma missing here _– Prototaxites stellaviatori can help..._ ”

 

Hugh closed his eyes, letting words he didn’t have the energy to try to understand wash over him in the hope they would bring some comfort and ground him, the way he remembered them always doing.

 

 

 

*

 

 

 

Keyla was staring at Joann across the chessboard. She had long since stopped bothering trying to figure out her next move before Joann had decided on hers. She was loosing pathetically. But it wasn’t the beauty in the face in front of her that was compromising her concentration and apparently, Joann noticed.

 

“What’s wrong?” she asked, as she captured a pawn with her bishop and gently tapped the side of the attack board to let the indicator show it was now in her possession.

 

“O’Neill’s flying.”

 

Joann looked up in confusion, but then seemed to remember the rant about the new trainee pilot and chuckled.

 

“Relax. It’s not like we’re going to crash. This is open space, you know, not a docking maneuver.”

 

“That’s not it.” As much as she trusted the guy to find something to run into during a training exercise, her problem was another. “I can _hear_ the engines complain about him.”

 

Joann only snorted and returned her attention to the chessboard.

 

“No,” Keyla insisted, “Listen!”

 

Reluctantly, she did, and they both fell silent, the soft harmonies of the engines filling the room around them.

 

“That’s warp 2,” Keyla whispered. “And it won’t take long until...” She waited for the telltale change in tone that had been keeping her on edge for the entire evening, and it came as if on command.

 

“There.”

 

She couldn’t even describe it, expect that it was  _wrong,_ and Joann had to hear that too, but the look on her face hadn’t changed.

 

“It sounds perfectly normal to me,” she said, like that wasn’t the most outrageous response possible.

 

“You know you’re insulting me, right?”

 

Amused, Joann shook her head.

 

“He has to learn it, though,” she tried to reason. “That’s what these things are for.”

 

“I know, I know.”

 

Keyla moved her queen to the other side of the board.

 

“But do they have to do that during the night shift?” She threw a pointed glance at the chronometer. It was getting late. “I won’t be able to sleep if this continues.”

 

Joann did her best to look understanding, but couldn’t keep a smirk from her face as she moved the attack board down to the far end of the first level, where her bishop was now a threat to both a rook on the second level and a knight on the third.

 

“What?!” Keyla cried, forgetting about their conversation immediately. She hadn’t seen this coming. This was ruining her entire strategy.

 

“No!”

 

Jumping up, she began leaning around the board to get a better 360° picture of the new situation and staring at it from above to see the three levels in alignment. Joann grinned at her.

 

“I’ve never seen a pilot so bad at 3D chess.”

 

“Shut up, I can do this,” Keyla retorted with a laugh. “I only fly this thing,” she defended herself, “I don’t _strategize._ That’s the captain’s job. Or Rhys’s.”

 

She sat back down again, not without noticing Joann’s sarcastic nod, and went over her options. But O’Neill was at it again, determined not to let her have a minute of peace, and it must have shown in her body language, because Joann grew serious again.

 

“You could come over to my quarters,” she suggested quietly. “They’re further from the engines.”

 

Keyla went for a move that she hoped would be damage control, and shook her head.

 

“No, I know you don’t sleep well in company. There’s no need for me to keep you up as well.”

 

But now Joann was the one not looking at the board, and not at Keyla either, so maybe she had missed something. Before she could ask, though, Joann explained,

 

“I’m still having nightmares about the bridge slowly being consumed by a deadly mushroom wonderland, so...” She shrugged. “I wouldn’t mind having you there.”

 

“Okay,” Keyla smiled, taking the casual tone to mean nothing more was needed, and Joann returned it.

 

Then she leaned forward to reach a piece and gently put it down again a few squares away, while Keyla frantically and pointlessly searched the board for an escape.

 

“Checkmate.”

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> A few things about this fic:  
> a) As much as I love her, Reno's blatant disregard of what I would hope is included in Starfleet health and safety has got to blow up in her face at some point.  
> b) What even is a Jefferies tube.  
> c) Plasma physics is above my paygrade.  
> d) I'm a mediocre 3D chess player at best, but you cannot play that game while casually sitting down. It is not realistic. There's so much you need to take in that's the whole point of it and you need to be able to wildly run in circles around the board to play. I'm passionate about this. Let me.  
> e) Saurians have not only six nasal canals but also four hearts, and can survive in the absurdest of environments. Go Linus.
> 
> Talk to me on [tumblr](https://www.frubeto.tumblr.com).


End file.
